


Pervicacious

by shatteredhourglass



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempt at Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton-centric, Deaf Clint Barton, Developing Relationship, Emotionally Constipated Clint Barton, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Human Disaster Clint Barton, M/M, Not Really Character Death, POV Clint Barton, he's doing his best, i love that there's already a tag for that, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatteredhourglass/pseuds/shatteredhourglass
Summary: He wakes up with a start, heart rattling wildly in his chest. His fingers scrabble at the sheets, pushing them down, the memory of bloody wounds and violence too frighteningly vivid for a dream. His shaking hands reveal scarred, blank skin, but nothing that makes sense in the frantic racing of his mind.What the fuck.





	Pervicacious

“Hawkeye, can you get a hit?”

“I’m on it,” Clint says over the comms as he rises out of a crouch.

He’s perched on one of the higher buildings in the area, a skyscraper advertising some fancy bank he doesn’t really care about. The giant murder robot, however, cares a little too much, judging from the way it’s trying to blow up everything within a fifty mile radius. He twists to the side to avoid a laser blast, landing hard enough on the concrete that the wind’s knocked out of him. His elbows scrape painfully on the rough ground but he gets up, pulls an arrow out of his quiver with one hand. The Iron Man armour blasts the robot from the side, and as it turns Clint sees the timer. It’s counting down steadily, far too close to zero for his liking and that’s when he realises there’s no time for a clever plan. Tony gets swatted from the air with a jarring screech of metal and Clint grits his teeth, starts running for it.

There’s blood on his arm, sticking to his bracer wet and warm, and he closes his eyes briefly, tries to push all his aches and pains and worries away. It doesn’t really work, but he keeps going anyway. In his ear, Sam’s bickering with the guy they’ve just managed to capture, and he can hear Tony groaning. He’s alive, then. At least there’s some good news. He ducks out of the way of a shard of concrete the robot’s managed to dislodge, swearing profusely, and prays to whatever’s out there that he remembered to turn the fucking iron off before he left the apartment this morning. His boots skid on the concrete and he hears someone breathing heavily over the comms.

“Fuck, that hurt,” Tony says, sounding strained.

“You crashed a few streets from me, Stark, you need help?”

“I could use a hand up, yeah, thanks, Romanoff. Knew you loved me after all.”

Natasha snorts, loud enough that Clint smirks a little hearing it.

“It’s a bomb,” Steve says in his ear, cold.

They’re not going to be close enough to get rid of this thing, he realises with a chill. Chasing down the mastermind behind the robot was all well and good, but now Clint’s the only one within range of the bomb. Tony won’t be getting up after that crash in time. He wishes Natasha was here with him. Or Barnes. God, he really should have done something about all those feelings he’s been harboring before he dies at the hands of his enemies. Should’ve taken him out for a beer, stuck his hand down those deliciously tight black pants like he’s been wanting to since he saw that ridiculous murder strut. Oh well. Maybe the afterlife will have an imaginary Winter Soldier for him to hit on, that’d be nice.

“Barton, you need to get _out_ of here,” Bucky barks. “The civilians have all been evacuated, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter if a few buildings go down!”

Speak of the devil.

Clint considers the thought, he does, but then he reaches the edge of the roof and spots the dog down the street, a golden retriever that reminds him of Lucky. _Awh, fuck_ , he thinks to himself. He can’t let the dog get blown up, he’d be a shitty superhero if he did. Knowing how shitty the evacuation process is, too, he’s sure there’s people in these buildings still. He can’t just run for it. Saving people was what Avengers did, and dogs were even better than people, so that was that. And his goddamn bow got snapped in the earlier fight, so there’s only one thing for it. He hears someone shout, probably Steve, and then he’s taking a running start and jumping from the roof. If this is how he goes, well, at least they’ll remember his name properly in the newspapers now instead of calling him _Hawkguy_.

The robot doesn’t have the time to avoid him, it’s too big and heavy, so he smacks directly onto its shoulder. He nearly slips and falls, but there’s a piece of wiring jutting out that he wraps his fingers around just in time. It burns, it hurts, but he clenches his jaw and holds on. Tony’s gone, Thor’s off-world, and the others are all stuck on the ground where they can’t get at the vital parts. The red light of the timer blinks down to four, three, two seconds, and then he lunges forward and slams the Stark arrow against the circuit panel. There’s a long pause and he swears he can hear the dog barking, and then there’s sparks and a loud, rumbling groan that rattles through Clint’s bones and the robot grinds to a halt.

“Phew,” Clint says, because he can’t think of anything clever.  
  
”You stopped the bomb?” Natasha’s straight to the point, as always.

“Do you see another guy on the giant fucking death robot? No? Well, I guess it must’ve been me then,” he retorts.

Natasha says something in reply but Clint’s attention has returned to the robot, which is… sparking in a very worrying manner. He takes a careful step backwards and then there’s a sharp, burning _crack_ of pain that makes him cry out.

He falls.

 

##

 

“Wh’t th’ fuck,” he mumbles.

The world sounds muted, and he fumbles around blindly without opening his eyes until his aids are placed in his open palm. He fits them in and lets out a sigh of relief as the hum of machinery and the beep of a heart monitor settles into his ears. His back hurts.

“Fucking idiot,” Bucky says without a hint of remorse.

Clint struggles into a sitting position, takes in the white walls and paper-thin sheets and realises he’s in the medical ward in Stark Tower. There’s an IV line hooked into his arm, but no casts or anything beyond what feels like bruising. It hurts, but it doesn’t _hurt_. Like he’s been slapped around at a bar rather than been fighting a giant murder bot. Weird. He should be dead, falling off of a fifty-storey robot like that. Not that he isn’t _glad_ to be alive, but Bucky’s sitting in a chair pulled up to the bed, legs stretched out enough that his knees touch the thin mattress, and he looks pissed off. The chair looks uncomfortable, like it had been built for torturing people with how hard and cheap it looks. Maybe that’s why Bucky looks so mad. Clint wonders if anyone managed to grab the parts of his bow from the roof or whether it’d been abandoned there. It’ll be a bitch to get a new one with the right feel to it.

“What happened?”

“You fell off a fucking robot,” Bucky spits.

“Yeah, I remember that. What happened _after_ that?”

“We found you in a garbage truck,” he says.

_Typical _,__ Clint thinks. A garbage truck. Somehow it doesn’t surprise him. What does surprise him is the clearly agitated presence sitting beside him, and the fact Bucky’s apparently been hanging out, waiting for him to wake up. He’d expected Natasha, maybe, to be sitting with him rather than the fucking _Winter Soldier_. Bucky really doesn’t strike him as the mother hen type, but here he is nonetheless, with his head angled to the side, looking like he maybe wants to murder Clint after all. And so soon after his near-death experience, Clint isn’t particularly enthused by the thought. He just wants to go back to sleep, and maybe sneak off to his apartment when no one’s looking. Cuddle the dog and catch up on the episodes of The Bachelor he’s missed while he’s been at Stark Tower fighting crime.

Bucky’s still frowning at him. “What?”

“Why are you so reckless?” Bucky mutters.

Is he reckless? Compared to a normal person, maybe he is a little reckless. Compared to Steve Rogers, he’s very safe. Clint doesn’t know what to think about the way that Bucky Barnes apparently _cares_ if he looks after himself or not. Even Natasha doesn’t really talk about feelings when they have near-death experiences- she just gives him that _look_ and then hands him a scalding hot coffee. He’s not sure how to react to what feels like a lecture on valuing life from a hundred-year old assassin. He’s pretty sure his facial expression conveys his thoughts on the matter, because Bucky looks at him and then sighs, sounding exasperated.

“It’s not my fault the robot sparked,” he says finally, sounding a little petulant even to his own ears. “Supervillains don’t exactly follow occupational health and safety regulations, you know.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “What about last month, with the guy in the red suit? He accidentally stabbed you in the stomach.”

“Hurt like a bitch,” Clint agrees, because Wade really needed to be more careful with those katanas. He’d been lucky it hadn’t pierced anything vital on its way through him. “Wasn’t my fault either, though.”

“The week before that,” Bucky continues flatly. “The woman with the terrorist organization.”

"I was the closest person!" 

"The week before _that_ , you got kicked off the roof of the Tower."

“Do you think I somehow, I don’t know, disrupt the fabric of the universe so all this shit happens to me? Well, I don’t. I’m just in the right place at the wrong time, Barnes, I can’t do anything about it.”

“You could’ve run away from the robot,” he insists.

Clint looks down at his hands, at the scars crisscrossing his tanned skin. Come to think of it, he doesn’t think he’s ever actually run away from a fight in his life. Strategic retreats, yes, but he never actively _avoids_ fights. God, maybe he needs to see a therapist about his aggression. Or… he could just beat up some bad guys until he stops thinking about it. Yeah, that sounds like a better use of his time. Bucky lets out a frustrated sound and Clint blinks at him, because he’s just woken up and he’s not sure why Barnes is so stuck on this. Shit like this happens to him all the time, it’s not like it’s out of the ordinary.

“You don’t have to keep sacrificing yourself for the good of the world,” Bucky hisses, and Clint flinches away from the venom in his voice.

“Christ, you got a wasp in your pants or something, Barnes? Chill out. We’re heroes. That’s kind of the job description,” he answers, a little uneasy.

Bucky’s eyes flick away from his face. “Don’t take stupid risks,” he says flatly, before he stands up.

Clint watches as he leaves the room, cringing a little when the door to the hospital room slams shut. He’s not entirely sure what just happened but he doesn’t like it. There’s an agitated swirling mess of feelings in his chest now and he can’t pinpoint exactly _why_ it’s there. He’s a normal human masquerading as a superhero, near-death experiences come with the territory. He shifts against the sheets and pulls them up under his armpits, wondering if they’ve left him a shirt here somewhere. It’d be just perfect if he has to do yet another half-naked dash to his designated floor. It’s not like he has any shame or dignity, but he’d like to pretend sometimes. Where is the staff in this place?

“What did you say to Barnes?”

Clint blinks at Natasha as she slides in through the abused door, not a single hair out of place. She must _love_ hanging out with him and Bucky, because next to them she looks even more immaculate and beautiful than usual. They're just a couple of vaguely-homeless looking guys. Not unattractive, mind you, but they wouldn't be out of place at the local soup kitchen. He sags back onto the pillows as she makes her way over to the bed and settles on the mattress next to him, their legs touching through the sheets. She raises a single eyebrow and he sighs, feeling a million years older than he actually is. Right. Bucky.

“He was lecturing me on looking after myself more,” he answers. “Not taking risks.”

“You are pretty reckless,” she agrees, and he lets out a plaintive whine. Of course she’d side with Barnes. She settles one hand in his hair and scratches lightly, and _oh_ , that’s nice. Natasha isn’t much of a touchy-feely person but she knows him like the back of her hand and he is _very_ touchy-feely. He lets out a contented hum and tries to push aside the anxiety of having Bucky mad at him. Then again, Bucky always seems to be at least a little annoyed by him anyway. Maybe it’s just business as usual. But he can’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong, because there’d been that look in Bucky’s eyes that, on anyone else, would be worry, or something close to fear.

“You should talk to him,” Natasha says after a pause.

“I tried that,” Clint groans, frustrated. “And look what happened. I suck at talking.”

“You do, but try anyway, hmm?”

“Do I have to, Nat? Can’t I just- I don’t know, leave it alone?”

“You like Bucky,” she reminds him. “He’s worth trying to talk to.”

“Why do you have to be right all the time? You’re making me look bad.” He rests his forehead on the curve of her shoulder, but he can almost feel the radiance of her smile even though he can’t see it. Her fingernails scrape at his scalp deliciously, an edge of pain that makes Clint lets out a delighted sigh.

“It’s just the sensible thing to do,” she says. “He’s doing his best. Appreciate him.”

“I do,” he grumbles, but his heart’s not in it. She’s right. If Bucky’s upset because of him, he needs to try and fix it. Even if he sucks at talking. If talking doesn’t work, he’ll just have to come up with something else that does. He can do that. Bucky’s company means enough to him that he has to try, at least. _Maybe if he gets mad again, I’ll just kiss him to shut him up _,__ he thinks giddily, even though he’s definitely not going to kiss Bucky without express permission. Natasha snorts like she knows what he’s thinking and hey, maybe she does. He wouldn’t be surprised.

“I’ll let you get some rest,” she informs him. “Tomorrow, you fix things with Barnes.”

“Tomorrow, I fix things with Barnes,” he repeats.

She presses a kiss to his forehead and then gets up. The silver chain around her neck catches the light and he smiles a little at the arrow hanging from it. No matter what happens, at least he’s got her. She leaves the room a lot quieter than Bucky had, and then he’s alone. He lets his head hit the pillow and thinks idly about pulling out his aids. He’s going to regret not taking them out, but he also can’t quite work up the energy to bother with them.

His dreams don’t make sense.

 

_The blood’s leaking out past his fingers, slick and hot, and there’s a horrible burning sensation like his lungs are on fire. He gasps out something that isn’t quite coherent, pleading for someone to stop the pain. Please, oh god, please, make it stop. No one hears his pleas, and he bites back the urge to scream. The concrete’s biting into his bare knees and his vision’s swimming like he’s been underwater, like he’s drowning while still on land. There’s too much blood. The red’s staining everything, and that’s when it hits him, that he’s going to die here. This is it._

_It’s still worth it._

_The world tips sideways and he realises distantly that someone’s laying him down. That’s nice of them. He didn’t really want to fall forward and hurt his face, even if he is dying._

_A stubbled face swims into view, sharp jawline and wide, endlessly blue eyes. Pretty, Clint thinks vaguely. It makes him smile. Bucky. Bucky’s safe. He looks scared, though, which is a little weird. What would the Winter Soldier be scared of? Not boring old Hawkeye, surely, especially with the way his life is draining away through his fingertips, so much that he can barely force his eyes to stay open. Bucky says something to Clint, but he can’t hear it over the buzzing in his head. He hopes it’s not anything important. Where are his hearing aids? Hell, maybe he’s wearing them and he’s just so beyond help that his senses are shutting down, one by one. Cold metal touches his bloodstained, shaking hands, presses firmly like Bucky’s trying to help keep the blood in, but he has to know it’s too late. He’s not stupid like Clint, he’s smart and violent and beautiful and the team needs him._

_Why, Bucky’s mouthing to him. Why?_

_“Couldn’t help it,” Clint says dizzily, and he can’t hear it but his lips shape the words anyway. “You know me, Barnes, I’m a fucking disaster.”_

_The movement Bucky makes has Clint guessing that he’s laughing, but it’s not a nice kind of laughing. There’s something heartbreaking about it that has tears welling up in Clint’s eyes, even though he’s laying here bleeding out and Bucky being upset should be the last of his problems. He thinks Bucky might be crying too, although he’s not entirely sure because everything’s still wobbling violently to the point where he’d be puking if he had the energy._

_“I’m sorry,” he says, but he’s not really sorry, and by the expression on Bucky’s face he knows it too. He’s not sorry about that, but he is sorry he’s never going to get the chance to finally take Bucky out to that club he’s been researching, the nice one with the jazz music he’d figured out Bucky likes. He never even got the chance to make a move. Bucky swipes at his own face with his right hand, trying to get rid of the tears, and it hurts a little. He shouldn’t be making someone that beautiful cry, he’s a fucking jerk, even if he is dying._

_Bucky says something that looks suspiciously like the word ‘idiot’ and then he’s leaning in to kiss Clint, and all Clint can taste is blood but-_

__

He wakes up with a start, heart rattling wildly in his chest. His fingers scrabble at the sheets, pushing them down, the memory of bloody wounds and violence too frighteningly vivid for a dream. His shaking hands reveal scarred, blank skin, but nothing that makes sense in the frantic racing of his mind.

What the _fuck_.


End file.
